This week's best classified ad inquiry

[Phil Herring]

HI, I WAS OPPURTUNED TO SEE YOUR ADD ON THE WEB AND I'LL LIKE TO KNOW WHAT YOUR LAST ASKING PRICE IS AND THE PRESENT PERFORMANCE OF THE BOAT.PLS GET BACK TO ME ASAP CONSIDERING THIS OFFER, BECAUSE I'M PLANNING ON EMBARKING ON A HOLIDAY TRIP WITH MY FAMILY AND I INTEND GOING ALONG WITH THE BOAT.THANKS. Love that: I intend on going along with the boat. I wonder where the boat will choose to go this year?

 

[gary]

yea, forget the

Yea, forget the family, I'm going with the boat

 

[Gary Wyngarden]

Autopilot

Now Phil,Let's not be critical. Maybe he thought the boat had an autopilot and could take care of itself. Gary WyngardenS/V Wanderlust h37.5

 

[Baysailor2]

Scammers

With my 27 for sale on another web site, I can attest that this is message is the first "bait" being trolled in front of a seller to see if he'll bite. It usually ends up with an offer that is over the asking price and asks for a return payment of the difference. The overpayment itself turns out to be fraudulent. I've had one offer a payment by money order on a defunct bank. Another wanted me to pay for his "freight forwarder" and "surveyor" to travel to the US to make the purchase and shipping arangements--in advance!All have been written in poor English, with no understanding of nautical terms, etc.Me, I'm going with the boat too!!!

 

[Jack Tyler]

419 Scams

Those of you who get these various 419 scams delivered to your mailbox on occasion might find the following site interesting reading:http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/A discussion of all this can be found at the Cruiser Log thread: http://www.cruiserlog.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1204Personally, I don't have the time to become a 419 'reverse' scammer but I love reading about some of the techniques being used to tie up the scammers time, effort and occasionally money in lieu of them spending it bombarding all of us with more junk. Given that this specific kind of fraud is believed to be the most lucrative form in existence these days, it suggests there are are a lot of greedy and/or dumb folks with internet access...Jack

 

[artfem]

Hey

Maybe you should start with just part of the boat. Maybe he will just go along with the anchor. Preferably in deep water...

 

[Fred Ficarra]

Hey Jack!

I'm looking for hobby ideas for this winter. What are some good scams to pull on these thieves? Just for fun of course, not because I'm a retired cop.

 

[Tim C350 April IV]

Go Get 'em Fred!

Fred - Actually this looks like fun - if I had the time. Check out the link below. There are some fairly clever people, with way more time than me.Good Luck!Tim BroganApril IV C350 #68Seattle

 

[Fred Ficarra]

Ohhhh myyy gawwdddd, Tim. Perfect.

What a WONDERFUL site. Just what I was looking to do. Let the rains come.

 

[Calif. Ted]

May I remind everyone to use a disposable

E-mail address for anything that may generate a lot of spam. I've found MSN's free Hotmail very useful in this respect but any web portal like Yahoo etc. has free mail systems also. The advantages are that since this is a web based mail service you can access from any computer. This means you can mess with 'em from the local Starbuck's if you want. Also pervents anyone gettin the IP number for your real address. And you can make as many accounts as you want, maybe a different address for each of your many new "best buddies", something cute like sneakyoldguy@hotmail.comAlso this way it goes thru MSN's virus scanners etc before it gets to you, not much but all in all gives you another thin layer of cyber separation between you and evildoers.And you just "abandon" any address that you don't wanta use anymore.

 

[RAD]

Reply to Tim's link

Went to the letters archives and just read The Tale of the Painted Breast and been laughing for an hour now,quite funny stuff.